- MERRIAM WEBSTER COLLEGIATE DICTIONARY MAC OS X PORTABLE
- MERRIAM WEBSTER COLLEGIATE DICTIONARY MAC OS X FREE
It is not as American as we would like, but it has not ignored the New World, either.ĭictionary of American Regional English, volume I A-C, volume II D-H, volume III I-O, volume IV P-Sk, volume V Sl-Z. Instead, it has its own editorial team, is updated far more often, and includes many entries and meanings missing from the OED. Surprisingly, it’s not just a subset of the OED above.
MERRIAM WEBSTER COLLEGIATE DICTIONARY MAC OS X FREE
Free access can often be had through schools, libraries, and universities at no cost and sometimes even comes with alumni status. It will set individuals back about $300 a year unless there’s a sale. On the other hand, the OED Online is updated quarterly with thousands of new and revised entries and can be searched from any web browser. If your thesis or argument depends on the date of a first use of a word, don’t just quote a dictionary! ¶ Get the 20-volume paper version if you must, at $1000 or more, but it’s a fossil. But, because of careful and ponderous editing, it may be years or decades before these new, earlier uses are reflected in the work. Further, since the publication of the second edition in 1989, many new digital databases have appeared which index the full-text content of books, newspapers, ephemera, and other printed matter (including Google Books) it is now commonplace for second-edition entries to be easily antedated by a brief search of these databases. ¶ OED has very deep etymologies for its oldest words, though careful scholars will note that the first citation for an OED entry is probably not the first time a word was ever used, just the first time a word was found in print by OED editors and contributors. Weak on Americanisms, slang, and non-British dialects, but those are quibbles. The most comprehensive English-language dictionary ever made.
MERRIAM WEBSTER COLLEGIATE DICTIONARY MAC OS X PORTABLE
Portable and easy enough to handle for middle-schoolers and older. This is the dictionary we recommend to anyone who has basic, unspecialized day-to-day needs at home, school, or the office. Use a digital version of it online at no charge. Not quite an unabridged dictionary but it is all the dictionary that most people will ever need, which means, physically, that it’s a desk dictionary.
Includes audible pronunciations online and color photos in the paper version. Very reliable with excellent notes and very good etymologies with a strong emphasis on Indo-European roots. We make a small affiliate commission with Amazon and that helps, in a small way, to support the show.Īmerican Heritage Dictionary. (Not that anyone offered!) However, if you want to own them, please use our links below to make the sale. We recommend them because they’re good and we trust them, not because money changed hands. We often use them when researching questions for the show and for our own writing, though of course we have our own libraries and digital archives with many volumes and many gigabytes of data.
They are reliable, readily available, and respected by language professionals. These books and websites are especially recommended as reference works of first resort, the ones most likely to answer your questions with the best information.